A GameSpy Reader Q&A talks with Deus Ex: Human Revolution designer Antoine Thisdale about the upcoming action/RPG prequel and includes a recent IGN trailer where Thisdale answers other questions and shows off some gameplay footage. Here's his explanation of why they did away with weapon skills:

That's a very good question, and I have a very good answer. We wanted combat to rely on player skill, and not the fictional character's skill. We wanted to avoid the possibility of just buying the skill for sniper rifles, then you never use a sniper rifle, and later in the game you pick it up because, hey, that's going to be good for this situation -- and you take everyone down because you [bought the skill]. Also, one of the reasons for the skill system not being used is because it really portrays nanotechnology as mechanical. It's more about learning to physically use your body and use the mechanics that go with it, more than a skill-based system. It's kind of the same idea; we just spin it in a different way. But we didn't want it to directly affect combat with weapons. That was a very early choice, specifically because we wanted players to actually train with the weapons.

Post CommentEnter the details of the comment
you'd like to post in the boxes below and click the button at
the bottom of the form.

Pleco wrote on Aug 17, 2011, 12:52:I haven't made any reference to DX1 with regards to boss fights, only you have - talk about taking words out of context. My point is that it doesn't need context to realise that it's a boring clichéd boss fight.

You claimed it's a boring clichéd boss fight and my point was that it's an improvement over the original Deus Ex. Clear?

It's in the video interview linked in this very article, numbnuts - their gameplay justification for the boss fights is that they "force the player to be as clever as possible". If the game encourages the player to be clever throughout, it kind of makes that point irrelevant. Clear?

Well, they do need a different strategy with the first boss at least, as opposed to the standard levels. So they are still encouraging the player to be clever in a different way. "Kind of" doesn't work too well with words like moot and irrelevant, they are better as all-or-nothing words. It's quite lazy in my view, like your original remarks. Once you put in those details then it all makes sense.